If At First You Don't Succeed...

Petunia loves to bake with me.  I've wanted to try making spritz cookies for a while now (the kind below, that are made by forcing a soft dough through a cookie press.)

While at Costco on Black Friday, I found a cookie press for about $15 and tossed it into my cart.  Unfortunately, when I opened the box at home I discovered that it did not come with any directions (thankfully, I am married to an engineer...) or, more annoyingly, a recipe for spritz cookie dough.

Undeterred, I found a recipe online yesterday, made the dough, and then belatedly realized that the pot roast I was making for our company last night was going to be in the oven all afternoon, so I just wrapped the dough in plastic wrap and stuck it in the downstairs fridge to deal with today.  After church, lunch, a small caching adventure and helping Himself get the Christmas tree set up, I grabbed the dough back out and realized that I could use it as building material: it had set up as hard as cement!  No way that stuff was ever going to squeeze out through a cookie press, even after being allowed to return to room temperature.

Plan B: roll it out and cut it like sugar cookie dough.  Not so much...it crumbled and broke all over.  Plan C: roll it into logs, cut those into discs and bake those.  Worked OK, but still crumbly.  Finally resorted to plan D, which was slicing the big disk of dough into rectangular or triangular logs (no rolling involved)  and further slicing those crosswise to make rectangular or triangular cookies.  That finally worked: they look more than a bit odd but who cares.  They taste good and Petunia had fun decorating them with sprinkles.  And I sure as HECK am not using that spritz cookie recipe ever again: anybody have a good one for me??